


a borrowing of bones

by bambinoes



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Reunited and It Feels So Good, he's here to fight for winterfell (and her he's here for her), sansa remembers the same, theon's wanted to marry sansa for as long as he can remember
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 20:32:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18557329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bambinoes/pseuds/bambinoes
Summary: They sit in silence, for a time, because there is nothing left to talk about. The silence hangs heavy in the air above and between and around them, and for a second their hands meet, cold and icy, when she slides him a bowl of soup. Sansa hasn't been counting, but she knows it's been too long. She finds comfort in their silence, though, because while the dead march closer by the hour she was with him, and the lot of it felt more whole with each other than they did far apart.





	1. sometimes i forget to look at you

**Author's Note:**

> “Sometimes I forget to look at you. My eyes are shaking, head aching, my eyelids are too often shut. I forget to pry them open and stare in awe. Over time, I’ve come to recognize you by your touch, your warmth, the flutter of your lashes against my cheeks. I look at you now and your eyes are kind, your jaw is strong, and a smile stirs up your entire face. When you look at me, I’m home, wrapped up in your arms. I should open my eyes more often, because looking at you defies all time, I can see my future.”
> 
> — Grazia Curcuru

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> after season eight episode two..... i just could not.... could not.... go on any longer not writing about these two

 

Sometimes Theon forgets to look at Sansa.

It's a rare occurrence, for the most part, because in time he's found that doing so requires an otherworldly degree of self-control he's aware he has very little of. So he tries to fight it, instead, which arguably isn't the wisest of his decisions. Not when it's become second nature to search for flaming hair in every room he walks into.

Sometimes he thinks Robb knows, and nothing in the world scares him more (except possibly Lady Stark herself, but that wasn't new). The thought of it makes the skin inside his elbows prickle. He knows Robb loves him, loves him as a brother and as a friend—but he's memorised the furrow between his eyebrows well enough, knows that it's reserved for every young boy in Wintertown and beyond that all but perked up at the sound of Sansa Stark's name.

And he would very much like to keep his eyelids, thank you very much.  
  
"She's only eight," he hears Robb say once with a disgruntled frown. They're jostling around in the courtyard, swiping at each other with wooden swords Ser Rodrik had fashioned for them, when Sansa scurries past with an army of young hopefuls behind her. He feels his own fist clench tighter around the hilt. "Eight namedays, and she's got half the courtyard chasing after her skirts, tripping over their feet for her every command."

"How must we punish them, then?" Theon had answered, with a wolfish grin of his own.

The next day they slip through the Winterfell armoury and learn how to hack at wooden stumps with their swords—their first real ones carved of real steel—and parade around Sansa so menacingly that no boy dares to come near for months after. Any one that tries gets met with a growl fit for a direwolf and a death wish from two of the lankiest prepubescent Stark soldiers, wrists bruised and bent from waving their blades so wildly in the air. 

They're sent to bed without supper that night, but it's the best night Theon's had in a long time. For weeks Sansa sulks, scowling and huffing and throwing glares so icy they could rival her mother's, and he doesn't remember a time he's felt so victorious.

 

* * *

 

Theon thinks he'd like to marry her, one day. He does not know much about marriage but it feels like the right thing to want, when it comes to Sansa, so he thinks about it all the same. Some days he dreams of a white cape draped on her shoulders, thick and heavy and important, her long hair swishing about behind her.... others he thinks of the way she would look at him, all caring and sweet-like, the way a bride looks at her husband. Sometimes he sees Lady Stark look at her husband that way, the odd moment when she forgets there are others in the room with them, and in that split second he imagines what it would feel like to be looked at like that. It scratches at a new part of his chest, he thinks, and he isn't quite sure what to make of it yet.

Theon does not know much about marriage, yes, but he sure would like to.

They are ten, Robb and he and the bastard Jon Snow, when Ser Rodrik equips them with blades from the armoury—real, sharp ones they were never allowed to touch before—and teaches them how to grasp the hilt and swing the steel and stick pointy end after pointy end. Theon never cared much for swords himself—he'd always been an archer, unrivalled in both skill and accuracy, and preferred the bow and arrow to a couple of sticks. Sticks were for the lesser man. But it was necessary, to learn, for a lad of his station, and he put up with it simply because there was nothing else better to do with his afternoons that did not involve Robb.

_(or his sister)_

They're only getting started into combat tactics when out into the courtyard saunters Sansa Stark, hair braided thickly down her back, walking hand-in-hand with the older and far less lovely Jeyne Poole. Theon almost loses his footing. He knows for a fact Sansa never ventures out into the training yard—not during the busier hours, at least, when there was an arrow whizzing over your ear every time you moved your head—but he imagines he'd have paid far more attention had he known Sansa would be watching them after all. Immediately he straightens his back, adjusts his stance, and forces himself to look at the maester and nothing else. Certainly not at the flaming red hair behind him, certainly, certainly not.

He really does not like sword fighting. 

For the next few minutes they practice swiping at the air, at their invincible, invisible enemy, poking holes into their invisible armor and cutting clean strokes through their invisible necks. He sees (from the corner of his eye) Jeyne Poole squeal and bring her hand to her mouth when his blade swings about and nearly runs through the bastard's armor. Accidentally, of course. Jon grits his teeth and says nothing, and neither does Sansa. He feels his jaw clench a little. When Ser Rodrik suggests a go at close combat, Theon nearly lunges.

"I'm sure I can handle a bastard," he quips snidely, and sniggers at his own wit. He hopes Sansa can hear him, just _knows_ Sansa doesn't like him either. Or so he thinks, at least. Sansa doesn't say much about what she feels about anyone, so he's working on a whim here. The bastard makes a noise under his breath and takes his place opposite him anyway, eyes black and beady and studying his every move. Theon readies himself, steadies himself.... looks straight and extends his—

Jon's sword goes  _wack_ against his; there's a satisfying slap when the steel whips over his hand and scutters against the dirt. In less than a second, the bastard Jon Snow has bested him for all to see. Theon turns red all over until he's blinded with it. 

He's left scowling long after the yard nearly empties. For a moment he debates on burying his face into the dirt until it cools his burning cheeks, but decides against it when he imagines Lady Stark's glare when he shows up for supper caked in mud. In his head he spits swear after swear at the bastard, all the filth he knows of (which isn't many), and it's between  _cunt_ and  _cocksucker_ when he feels ruffling beside him. He feels the flurry of heat prickle up his neck when he whips his head around and sees little Sansa Stark.

"My lady," he says, very nearly forgetting his courtesies.

"You don't like swords very much," she tells him softly. It's not a question. She says almost everything softly, Theon thinks, like she expects the words to crack into two in front of her. The way a lady must. He's never met anyone so like a lady as little Sansa Stark.

"They're not of my choosing, no," he says. "A bow and arrow, well..."  
"I've seen you with a bow and arrow," she says. "You're slightly better at it than most."

 _"Slightly."_ He grins. "I think I'm due a lot better than _slightly_ , my lady."

She smiles at this—a small smile, soft and pretty like the rest of her, but very much like she knew something he did not. "I'm sure you think you are."

"I'll hit harder next time," he promises. "Come watch us and you'll see."

"Maybe try holding onto your sword first," she corrects bluntly, but softens the blow with a kiss on the cheek.

And just like that the shame is gone. The only heat left now is the quick sputter in his chest.  

 

* * *

 

Her eyes are like glass, he's decided—all perfect like the rest of her. He wonders how many times a day she's told how perfect she looks when her hair is down, licking around the curve of her neck like flames, but he knows—he decides to himself—that it probably still wasn't nearly as much as it should be.

For a while he's reserved himself from looking at Sansa so often, not when Robb's spent his free hours spitting promises of assured death to any boy who dares to eye his little sister. Of all her siblings Sansa loved Robb the best—her dazzling knight Robb with the dazzling white smile—and he took it in his heart's heart as an honour he could do no wrong by. When her tenth nameday arrives she prances around the keep in a flurry of grey silks, hair tightly coiled and braided like the queen's, and holds a pretend tourney in the courtyard for the coveted prize of lemon cake. There's a row in the courtyard when a squire punches a fist at another; Bran climbs to the top of a turret for the first time and Lady Stark nearly chokes in shock; Arya joins the fun and begins wacking at heads with a giant stick atop Hodor's shoulders. In the end it is Ser Robb that prevails, with little Sansa Stark's favour wound tightly on his arm, and Ser Robb that gets to stuff himself with a whole stack of perfectly rounded lemon cakes.

Ser Robb, being Ser Robb, names her the queen of love and beauty. 

Theon admires the look of winter roses, blue as frost, against the Tully red of her hair. It seems almost wrong to him that her hair was pinned up the way it was, almost ridiculous in its careful Southron fashion, and he felt the urge to pick at it with his fingers. It did look much nicer when it framed her face so, careless and free and like the Sansa he knows. When she moves close to him, clapping her hands in delight at the songs that wring through the air, he tugs on her braids until they fall apart.

 _"Theon!"_ She gasps, horrified, and touches her head. The curls spill down her shoulders, thick and red and lovely.

"It looks better down," he argues, and runs his fingers through them carefully. She yelps, pained, and swats him away. "Don't you touch me!" 

In the distance he can see Lord Stark turn his head, can hear the slightest of giggles bubbling out of Arya's mouth. Theo's jaw slacks, softly, when he sees how wet her cheek's gotten all of a sudden. "No, wait, I didn't—"

Sansa pushes past him, jarringly hard, and patters off with a hand on her face and another in her hair. Jeyne Pool, ever the devoted, scurries after her in suit.

It takes two hours at least—an hour of hopeful coaxing and another of knotting and pinning and swoops—before little Sansa Stark rejoins the festivities again. When she does she takes a seat beside her lord father at the head of the table in perfect silence, jabbing a spoonful of lemon cake in her mouth almost angrily. It is within this time that Ser Robb of Winterfell (now reduced to only Robb of Winterfell on account of his acquaintance with the supposed 'Hairslayer') comes to him with an unimpressed look and a mouth rimmed with crumbs of cake and scone.

Theon's shoulders sag. "Come off it, Robb," he says, wrinkling his nose and grinning. He grins a lot, he's noticed, when it feels like the last thing in the world to do. "I was only jesting, that's all."

"She says you ruined her nameday," Robb says dully. "She says you've embarrassed her in front of the whole court—nay, the North, she says—and that she wants to skin you alive, from head to foot, and feed you to the crows."

Theo's face sours. "That doesn't sound like something a lady would say."

Robb shrugs. "You touched her hair."

 

* * *

 

Theon's decided he likes pretty things. He likes to holler at them too, when he has the chance, grin boyishly at their chests and watch them giggle back at him all dainty-like. After a while he decides that it doesn't matter much to him, how they look—a good lay is a good lay, black hair or blonde hair or brown-eyed or not, they were all the same in bed. They giggle the same, and they make all the same sounds, and every one of them liked his hand in between their thighs.

It is on Theon's fifteenth nameday when he first wanders into a brothel with a pretty gold coin or two. He had felt them jingle in the pocket of his breeches, all weighty and exciting—he'd thumbed them on the way to Wintertown, teetering on the edge of his horse. The servant girls had whispered, the way they do, when he had slipped through the stables late that night. They knew where he was going. Every little lord does the same.

The girls at the brothel grab at him, snap their teeth deliciously at him, love his curly hair and cocky grin and slanted eyes. They were of every shape and build and size, thin and short and filled in every curve, and the fabrics that hung on them were so flimsy you could reach out and rip them right off. Theon spends his first two weeks samplingthem, licking at every mouth and parting every leg—insisting, more to himself than anyone else, that he comes home more of a man than he ever was before.

He notices the distinct lack of Sansa the third week around, particularly during the routine suppers when everyone in the fast is present, and realises in the midst of an odd serving of lemon cake that no one is swiping their plate clean of it. He shoots a narrow look at Arya. "Where's your sister?"

"With her letters again, I suppose," Arya shrugs, and slurps at her oranges.

"Her letters." He repeats. "What letters?"

"She's been getting them a while now," she says. "The ravens bring them by, sometimes, and she giggles so loud it sends the whole keep to their feet. I imagine she likes to pull her hair over her lord husband's names and holdings, when they arrive. She and that ridiculous Jeyne Poole."

Theon blinks stupidly. "Her lord husband."

"A Tyrell," Arya tries. "Or a Tarly. Or a Tully—no, not a Tully. One of the two."

 

 

"She's twelve," Theon bites angrily. The redhead moves above him, rubbing slow circles into his lap, fisting his hair into tight curls. "She's a  _child._ "

" _You're_ a child," She giggles, and dives in to meet his mouth. 

When he finishes, empties himself into her, he sinks deeper into the scratchy silks and sighs. The insides of his head have started to throb, all caged up inside his skull.

"What do they call you?" He asks, after a while, because it seemed like the right thing to ask.

"They call me Ros, my lord," She whistles low, her face red and flushed. "But you can call me whatever you like."

For a moment Theon takes his hand to her hair and unspools a tight red curl between his fingers. The color of it had set off the strangest pang in him... for a moment, the longest, most impossible of moments, he imagines calling her Sansa.

And then he doubles over, sickened, emptying his stomach onto the floor, and thinks of it no more.

 


	2. my eyelids are too often shut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I want to fight for Winterfell, Lady Sansa," he'd said. "If you'll have me."
> 
> She would. She would have him. She would, she would, she would.

 

He came to her whole now, more human than she had seen him last. More himself than he had ever been. He stood tall, steel plated on his chest and on his back, and his eyes held something new in them.

He came with men.

"My queen," he had said, and his knee struck against the stone. (She had nearly forgotten his voice, too. It had sounded so different, when it trembled and cracked so)

"Your sister?" The Ironborn had surprised even Daenerys.

"She only has a few ships and she couldn't sail them here." His voice was stronger now, careful. She closed her eyes and felt it all around her. "She's sailing to the Iron Islands instead, to take them back in your name."

"But why aren't you with her?" 

He had looked at Sansa, then—steady in his own right—and swallowed. She could feel the cavity in her chest clench, the blood shoot through her veins. She couldn't do anything but look at him.

"I want to fight for Winterfell, Lady Sansa," he had said, voice heavy with something she could not name. He gripped his bow, grasped the weight of it and pressed it close. "If you'll have me."

Her feet reacted before the rest of her could—one after the other, messy and careless. She didn't think she could breathe again until she touched him. And she did, burrowed her head against his shoulder, her arms stretching for anything she could reach, all of him, all that was left, all that was whole and here and now....

She would have him. She would, she would, she would.

 

* * *

 

They sit in silence, for a time, because there is nothing left to talk about. The silence hangs heavy in the air above and between and around them, and for a second their hands meet, cold and icy, when she slides him a bowl of soup. Sansa hasn't been counting, but she knows it's been too long. She finds comfort in their silence, though, because while the dead march closer by the hour she was with him, and the lot of it felt more whole with each other than they did far apart.

Winterfell has always been a cold place, a quiet one. There had been days when it was not, when their laughter rang through hallways and echoed through nook and cranny and curve and corner, but those days were long gone now. This last night was no different. The rest of the North was here with them now, army after army, and still the air was harsh and empty. But Theon had grown here, and so had Sansa... this was home to them, had always been, and nothing but.

"It's selfish," Sansa says suddenly, feeling very small, "but I'm glad you're here."

Theon rubs his fingers over the steel covering his wrist, over his bruised and battered knuckles. "You haven't been selfish in a long time, Sansa," he says. "I am, too."

"Ridiculous." She wrenches her eyes shut and smiles a broken smile. "The dreams we had, when we had them. I suppose we never did get what we wanted, in the end."

The cold seeps in between them for the longest while, settling in an invisible heap not unlike the pillars of snow.

"You're alive," he says finally. "That is all I want."

"Not for very long, I'm hearing," she quips, but realises shortly after that it is the wrong one. She nurses at her soup, instead, cradling at the heat with her bare palms.

"I can't protect you anymore," he says, in a strangled sort of way.

"I know." She holds his gaze. "It isn't me you should be protecting. Not anymore."

"I will," he tells her. "I want you to know that, Sansa. I'll be protecting him. I'll be with Bran."

"I know," she tells him, and that is the end of it. She does not doubt him anymore.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this follows season 8 as it unfolds, so we'll see what's waiting for us next! tell me what u think..... if u want to see a little more of pre-war sansa and theon or some of the key moments in the series, let me know!


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